Friday, April 30, 2010

David Othen reported that CEMR 4011 and 4014 are "now coupled nose to nose with 5 or 6 empty grain cars" at Windsor Junction outside Halifax, Nova Scotia. Windsor Junction is where the Windsor & Hantsport Railway interchanges traffic with CN. These two GP9s have had some mechanical problems. It appears that now that the W&H's GE units are on site, and at least somewhat operational, the CEMR units are being sent back.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

I think I've just about decided which camera to get. As you may recall, I was considering the Canon XSi versus the Nikon D5000. Many of you commented, and I really appreciate the feedback. Some liked the Canon, some the Nikon, and there were a couple of other recommendations: the Fuji S100fs and the Olympus E620.

Since my last post, I've decided that I do want video on the camera, so that rules out the Olympus. The Fuji has video but it is pretty low-resolution. Now I'm comparing the Canon T1i versus the Nikon D5000, a worthy match-up.

I think in the end, I like Canon and that's what is going to tip the scales for me. Unless something else comes along shortly, my mind is made up. Now I just have to figure out the best way to finance it! :)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

On Monday (April 26) I worked from home in the morning, and intended to work from my office in the afternoon. I drove up Wilkes Avenue at noon, planning to catch the Canadian on the way. I did see VIA about halfway between Kenaston and the Perimeter, right on time. The Canadian was extra-long, with 3 deadhead cars on the head end and 13 cars in revenue service.

Right after that, I was brought into a conference call. Rather than drive while talking on my cell phone (have you signed Oprah's No Phone Zone pledge? Neither have I), I elected to pull over. While I was on the phone, several more trains rolled on by.

CN 199 followed VIA out of the city, with CN 5641 and CN 2401 providing the power. The container traffic was on the head end here, with the miscellaneous junk trailing. I was able to step out of my car, take a shot, then get back to the call.

Shortly after that, an eastbound rolled by with CN 8907 and CN 2423. It may have been CN 198 but I'm just guessing. 198 often rolls into Winnipeg around noon. No photos for that one.

The fourth train was the twice-weekly CEMR train heading for the Carman subdivision. CCGX 4010, CEMR 4001 and CEMR 4000 pulled about 70 cars. I took a few shots through the windshield and this is the best of them.
Soon after that, my call was done and I continued on to the office. Maybe I need to relocate my office...

Monday, April 26, 2010

Jason Shron, well-known to modelers as the founder of the excellent Rapido Trains, has launched a campaign to save VIA LRC 6917 from the scrappers. 6917 and two other LRC engines (6914, 6919) are at VIA's Toronto Maintenance Centre and are slated to be scrapped soon. The intent is for 6917 to be restored to at least display condition, and moved to the site of soon-to-open Toronto Railway Heritage Centre at the bottom of John Street in Toronto, at the former CP roundhouse. They need to raise well over $100,000 to purchase the locomotive and move it to the centre. Toronto Sun article

The LRC units were built by Bombardier (successor to MLW in Canada) between 1980 and 1984. VIA had 33? of these units at one point, and they operated for close to 20 years on VIA before being replaced by the F40PH-2s we all know and love.

I was going to go on a bit of a rant about spending a lot of money to preserve a second LRC, when one is already preserved, but that would be wrong. It's great that Jason is passionate about preserving the LRC and supporting the new museum in Toronto. It's great that he is putting a lot of his own money and time into the project, and nobody should discourage him from that. More people and more funds are needed for railway preservation, and I'd like to hear more stories like this.

What are your thoughts on preservation of railway items, like locomotives and cars?

On Friday night, I was sitting with my wife and kids at the Dairy Queen on Pembina Highway near the university. I remarked to my wife that I love railfanning in Winnipeg, since there are so many trains (and seven railways!), but the one thing I miss is chasing trains. These days I park somewhere and let the trains come to me. Occasionally I chase one but in general I am in the city and chasing is not possible. As I said to my wife, if you miss one train, chances are another will be along in a little while.

A minute or two after we had that conversation, CN 522 rolled past, right behind the restaurant, with CN 5786 and 2706, proving my point. I couldn't have scheduled it better if I had tried.

I think I will have to get out of the city and do a little more chasing. I like the adrenaline rush of leapfrogging the train to get a series of shots.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

I was visiting with Roger the collector in Lasalle this morning. I left with a boxful of timetables and magazines, and as I drove to the Perimeter Highway I noticed the time was right for the Hudson Bay to leave Winnipeg. The kids and I drove up to Wilkes Avenue and went out to just east of Diamond to get the shot. Within two or three minutes after we unloaded, I heard the train blowing for the crossings to the east. At 12:27 the Hudson Bay came into view.
Here's the consist.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

I was visiting my sister-in-law in the north end of Winnipeg on Thursday evening, and on my way home I spotted a CP switcher by the Safeway distribution center just northeast of the airport. I stopped to take a sunset shot. The conductor was on the ground walking the train. I think they must have had the locomotive lights off so as not to blind the passing motorists on route 90.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

"This train was composed of two F-40 (2) locomotives and seven (7) stainless steel HEP1 passenger cars. VIA has elected to repair four (4) cars externally. For this reason, VIA is seeking the services of an external Service Provider to perform the required repairs in order to bring the cars back to their running condition."

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

I was out and about yesterday afternoon, circling the CN Symington Yard, when I heard a CP freight get a clearance from CN to cross the St. Boniface spur. That meant they would be going along Archibald Street, an easily viewed area not far from where I was. I headed over to Plinguet Street (by the GWWD) to get a shot at the crossing. My son and I hopped out of the car.

The train stopped just west of the crossing, and the conductor got out to reline a switch for the main line. Then they proceeded slowly into the crossing and headed east.

A few things that interested me about this train: the crewman riding the flatcar a few cars from the end, and the "model train switch" in the CP service gondola on the end.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The CN TEST train is in town. A little birdie told me that train CN 496 was tying up for the evening at the Fort Rouge yard, after working the Rivers and Reddit subdivisions today. I went over to see if I could see the train. It is visible but badly backlit.
The train consists of CN 4807, CN 15007 (above) and CN 15008 (below).
The little birdie also told me that this train will be traveling down the Letellier subdivision tomorrow.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Currently the city is building phase one of the "Southwest Rapid Transit Corridor", a busway between Queen Elizabeth Way (near the Forks and the VIA station) to Jubilee Avenue at Pembina Highway (aka CN Fort Rouge). Part of this work involves a tunnel under the CN yards at Fort Rouge. This is scheduled to be completed next year. The plans allow for replacement of the rapid transit bus by a light rail system sometime in the future.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Caleb posted a nice video of VIA 15 and 14 at the China Town restaurant in Halifax. I like that spot... both for railfanning and for eating.

The title of this post refers to the old song by Doug & the Slugs, of course. The Slugs had quite a few good hits, including "Too Bad", "Tomcat Prowl", and "Making it Work" among others. Poor Doug Bennett passed away in 2004, alas.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Back in mid-March, I drove west on the CP mainline for a little while to take a few pictures of the grain elevator at Meadows, MB (here).
The elevator has a single-ended siding (points face east).
There is a beautiful shot of this elevator here. According to that page, the elevator was one of the first built by Paterson around the turn of the century (meaning the 19th-20th century!), and is now abandoned. The nearby modern elevator at Rosser handles all the traffic.
I found a list of wood elevators in Manitoba... good reference material.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Someone posted a link to a great article on track evaluation trains ("TEC trains"). As you may know, a TEC train is used to detect rail defects, through ultrasonics and other methods. I have seen a few in my time.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Occasionally I will post an older video of mine that has become a favourite on YouTube. This one is the most viewed video I have, at 18,739 views as of this writing. Well, that's not exactly true. I have two other videos that are more popular but they are LEGOtrain videos. :)

This particular video was taken in December 2003 during one of my many visits to Winnipeg. Two trains are shown - first CP 9571 pulls a train east past the CP shops on December 27.

Personally I like the second train better, because it features "red barn" CP 9013 rolling right under me while I stood on the Arlington Street bridge. I'm pretty proud of that little bit of tape.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

On Thursday (April 8) I went up to the CN mainline to try to catch the Canadian at noon. I was one red light too late. I saw VIA roll by in lovely sunlight as I approached the Wilkes Avenue overpass, but there was no chance for any pictures. Oh well.

I heard that CN 114 was coming into Diamond, so I went out to the bend west of Diamond to shoot them. I was just in time to get them coming around the bend. The video (below) had some focus problems, unfortunately, but the still shot turned out fine.

They slowed as they approached the CP Glenboro subdivision, and the conductor got out to manually reline the switch so they could go from the south to the north track. Here it is a ground throw switch and it looked like a fair bit of work to get the switch relined. I think they had to do it manually because they were already in the block and the RTC couldn't do it remotely.
Once the head end was through the switch, the conductor got back on board and they crossed the CP Glenboro subdivision.
I took a few more shots as they slowly came up to speed, then headed home. Here's the video!

Friday, April 09, 2010

I saw the twice-weekly CEMR train rolling across the prairie yesterday just after lunch. They pulled up to a crossing just north of the Perimeter Highway to wait for the conductor to show up. Their normal practice is for the conductor to stay at Carman Junction to reline the switch for the mainline, then get a taxi to the head end.
I talked with the friendly engineer for a few minutes. They had 107 cars and 6400 feet, and were to do a bit of switching at Oak Bluff before taking a block of 100 grain cars farther down the line. The engineer used to work on the now-defunct Southern Manitoba Railway.

Here's a quick video I took of the train pulling up to the crossing. Those GP9 engines make a distinctive noise.

Thursday, April 08, 2010

David Chiasson discovered that the former Smurfit-Stone caboose, lately NBEC 1000, at the St. Quentin museum.
The caboose seems to be at the end of the replica train, but not in line with it. Perhaps they need a little more rail before they can put it in line with the rest of the train.
You may remember I visited that station back in August 2007. At that time the station was done but there was no train present.

Here's the first photo I ever took of that caboose, when it was sitting under the highway 11 overpass in the Smurfit interchange track.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

The Canada Geese are back in Winnipeg and making a nuisance of themselves as usual. This goose was lazing on the tracks until CN 199 came by. The goose waited until the last minute before taking off, no doubt honking angrily all the while.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

There was a recent announcement that VIA is contracting with IRSI to purchase six refurbished RDCs for use on the existing Sudbury-White River run in Ontario and the Vancouver Island run. I'm curious what will happen to the RDCs that are already on the run. One can hope they will be deployed to new services...

A little birdie sent me some photos of the RDCs outside the IRSI shops in Moncton, taken this March.

In the next photo, note the coach 5581 sandwiched between RDCs 6200 and 6122.

Here's another article on the rebuilding of the Fredericton train station. There are a few inaccuracies in the history of the station (i.e. it had passenger service again from November 15, 1981 to early 1985) but it is worth a read.

Sunday, April 04, 2010

I was on vacation Thursday (April 1) to look after the kids. Of course my thoughts turned to railfanning, and we were on the road by 11:15 to go shoot the Canadian. I wanted to go to Elie to shoot it by the elevator on the west side. We headed down Wilkes Avenue and then onto highway 1, seeing no trains in the meantime. We arrived at Elie and set up to wait for the Canadian. I broke out sandwiches and we had a little picnic while we waited.

Just after 12:30, I heard VIA 1 calling the signals at east Elie. I got ready and soon enough they rolled on by. This is exactly the shot I wanted.The video, not so great. It started OK but the camera had focus problems and I caught the tripod's arm with my camera's strap and yanked it to the right. Sigh.

I decided that we should proceed on to Portage la Prairie and see if we could catch the Canadian on the west side. They beat us to Portage, but I heard them call a "clear to stop" signal meaning they were stopping, so that was good for me. As we went around to the west side, I saw a CP local heading west with a single unit pushing, five Simplot boxcars, six covered hoppers, and a rider caboose on the head end. No time for photos.

As we reached the west side of Portage, I saw an eastbound CN freight (CN 312) coming into town. 312 had two units on the head end. This is why the Canadian had to stop, since the Rivers sub is single track west of Portage. We set up in a field near the mall and waited for the Canadian.

The Canadian rolled by at about 13:25. Here's the whole train, again.

After that excitement, we drove around a bit in downtown Portage until CN 199 showed up. I decided to shoot it from the CN station. It had a very interesting consist.
It had Dash-9 CN 2525 followed by four Dash-8 units... BC Rail 4610, CN 2434, CN 2416, and CN 2429. Nice to see so many Draper Taper units!

We headed home after that. Somewhere along the way I saw a westbound CN freight and shot it from a long distance away. If I had to guess, I would say it had CN 8849 and CN 2649 for power but that is just a guess. The lead unit was definitely an SD70M-2, though.
It was a good outing!

Friday, April 02, 2010

I saw the oddest thing when I was waiting to shoot the Canadian on Monday (March 29). In the siding at mile 10.1 or so of the Rivers sub was a Plasser unit, CN 619-28.

There's a photo of the same unit in British Columbia in late 2004 here, with a plows on the front and back. He was apparently trying to find out what it was with not much success. There is reference to it being a tamper.

It turns out that it is a Plasser PTS-62, a "dynamic track stabilizer" which I guess is kind of like a tamper. From this site and others, what it appears to do is vibrate the heck out of the track horizontally while putting a vertical load on it.

The data sheet on the side of the unit has been modified to include metric units, as well as an increased weight. You can see the PTS-62 label at the bottom.

The Plasser site says this puppy can roll along at 50 MPH, although when working it crawls along at 1 MPH.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Around 03:00 on the morning of April 1, 1976, a washout happened near Bath, New Brunswick at mile 82.7 of the Canadian Pacific Railway Shogomoc subdivision. CP RS-18 8739 dropped into the gap caused by the washout. Trainman G.H. Sisson lost his life in the accident.

The engine was stripped of parts, including the diesel engine, main generator, electrical cabinet, and #2 truck complete with traction motors. The rest of the wreck could not be lifted, and was covered over and still remains there today.

About Me

I am a train geek and a photographer. But more importantly I'm a father and husband.

At times in my life I have been a computer geek, a gamer geek, a ship geek, a plane geek, a medievalist geek... and probably others. I am passionate about topics like these and I enjoy writing and talking about them.